Precision
by Contort
Summary: "Anders can't understand how anyone can just stand there while they whip a helpless teenager, and he prays he'll never be able to."


**Precision**

"Anders can't understand how anyone can just stand there while they whip a helpless teenager, and he prays he'll never be able to."

**A/N:** Anderpression(TM) is really catching. I sat down and drew thirty hash marks in my sketchbook today. It's horrifying how much that really is, and I felt kind of ill imagining how a real whipping would be. So... Got it out of my system one way or another.

* * *

><p>Anders is no stranger to pain.<p>

It's the templars' favorite weapon, after all, in a game he's been passing back and forth since he was twelve years old. He knows which templars are decent enough men simply stuck in a boring job, and he also knows which of them to push and how to get them to push back. He wears the marks of off-hand cuffs and slaps proudly, the bruises a badge of honor he refuses to heal. The other mages call him crazy, tut over him and wonder quietly when and how he'll be broken of his bad habits, but he just grins painfully and keeps it up, determined to _win_.

Sometimes he gets away with only a split lip or a black eye for his trouble, but other times, like the times he escapes from the tower or is caught trying to sneak out, Greagoir will nod solemnly and his templars will drag him off and beat him senseless while the Knight-Commander quotes the Chant and spouts threats and warnings. Anders can understand beatings, can understand how sometimes they get caught in the excitement and end up going too far. They'll misjudge their blows, and he emerges from the last one with two teeth loosened and several ribs bruised and cracked from metal shod feet.

Whipping, though, is precise.

They whip him after his third escape attempt - after he's eluded them for nearly a month (they still haven't figured out how he got out in the first place, and he's not going to tell them.) They stand there in Irving's office and argue over him like he's not there, held in place by two templars and reeling from another Holy Smite. Irving frowns and bumbles and talks in circles and tries to get him off with just another beating – _like that's __**acceptable**__, you bastard_ – but Greagoir grits his teeth and shakes his head.

"This boy needs to learn that there are consequences for his continued disregard for the rules of the Circle."

"Consequences" apparently means thirty lashes with a cowhide whip – and no healing.

They drag him down to the basement level, to the old Tevinter dungeons still in use. Irving follows on the Knight-Commander's heels like a dog and Anders has to clench his teeth to keep the venom he wants to spit in his mouth. _Stop him, you coward!_ he wants to scream, but he refuses to let them see him rattled. They stop in a room beside the cells, empty except for manacles on the walls and hanging from the ceiling and a battered old post standing in the torchlight.

Greagoir wields the whip himself. "I will not push off to a subordinate what I will not do myself." His convictions are no comfort to Anders as the two templars at his arms strip off his muddy clothes and leave him shivering in his smallclothes. They shackle him to the post and he wonders why – it's not like there's anywhere he can _run_ – but all thought is drowned out by panic when he hears the creak of leather and the metallic sound of Greagoir's footsteps.

"Someday you will thank me, boy, for teaching you this early," Greagoir says softly, and the next thing Anders hears is the whistle of the whip and a loud crack and then there is agony agony agony…

Anders is no stranger to pain, but even he can't understand how anyone can stand there and strike a bound and helpless teenager repeatedly – _thirty lashes_, he said – knowing exactly how much each strike hurts. He likes to pretend he bore it all stoically like the heroes from the tales, but to claim that would be a lie. Instead he screams and weeps and retches and prays somewhere in the back of his mind that they _hear this_ and know exactly what they've done, what they are doing.

He can't keep count of the strikes so it's an eternity before the blows stop and he's left hanging from his hands and feeling the blood flowing down his back in sticky sheets. He can hear people moving but he can't open his eyes and someone's sobbing hoarsely and oh, wait, that's him. In those same stories the hero usually blacks out conveniently and he's left wondering why he can't and he really wishes he could because being awake _hurts_ right now.

They unchain him and he would collapse to the floor, but someone catches his shoulders and lowers him gently to his knees.

"No healing," Greagoir says from somewhere behind him, and Anders wishes briefly, confusingly, that he'd come closer so that Anders could melt that frown off his face with a handy fireball and at the same time wants to shrink away and _please don't hurt me anymore._

"I'm just putting him to sleep," Irving says quietly, defensively, and the world goes dark.

* * *

><p>Anders dreams of rage demons promising horrible, bloody vengeance, and it's a relief when he finally opens his eyes to find himself on his belly in an infirmary cot with no templars in immediate sight.<p>

"Ah, you're awake."

Anders swallows a groan – the _last_ person he wants to talk to right now – and it's both a hollow victory and a disappointment when Irving can't bring himself to meet his eyes as he sits down on the bedside chair. Anders looks back down and contents himself with pretending to ignore the man.

"I am glad to see you back, Anders. We missed you while you were gone." Irving ignores the derisive snort that escapes him. "You are in the infirmary now, and you should be better before you know it. Greagoir insists that I remind you that you're not to heal yourself with magic, and that failure to comply will result in more discipline. He always was so heavy-handed." The last is said in a sigh.

_You have no idea_, Anders thinks, but he holds his tongue, glaring at the off-white pillowcase under his cheek instead.

Irving shifts uncomfortably in his chair, hesitating before speaking again. "I know that you are angry with us, lad, but this is for your own good. If you would just settle down and accept your life here, in the Circle where you are safe, and stop running off, you could find peace. Study hard and wait a few years and you'll be a Harrowed mage. With your natural gift for healing, you could easily get a posting outside, maybe even in a city. You shouldn't be so impatient."

Anders clears his throat quietly and rasps out, "Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just."

Something passes over Irving's face and he frowns. "What was that?"

"Those who bring harm without provocation to the least of his children are hated and accursed by the Maker." Anders' voice is stronger this time, and he smiles grimly when Irving finally meets his eyes.

The First Enchanter cycles through a serious of minute facial expressions before settling on a deep frown. "I don't know what you want from me, Anders, and I don't know what you think you're proving. Whatever this game you think we're playing is, you forget that it is you who choose to bring harm down upon yourself."

"You keep us locked up," Anders protests.

"It is for your own good!" Irving's voice is a heated whisper. He visibly restrains himself, casting out for his usual mask of bumbling good nature. "You're old enough to understand, Anders, that very rarely is there a perfect solution. We work within the system already set in place and do the best we can to make things as calm as possible. Your classmates understand this. I don't know why you can't accept it as well."

"My classmates are a pack of, of _sheep_, numbed into complacency by the Chantry and their hypocritical teachings! They cower from you and your templars like whipped dogs because they're too afraid to –" Anders cries out as the muscles in his back flex as he tries to sit up. Through the roaring in his ears, he thinks he hears Irving sigh.

When he pries open his scrunched eyelids, Irving is standing and an infirmary healer in hurrying towards them. Irving looks down on Anders and the spreading blotches of red on his bandages with a closed expression on his face.

"I forget myself, and I apologize," Irving says finally. "You are in no health to be having a conversation such as this. If, when Senior Enchanter Wynne decides you are sufficiently recovered, you wish to continue our… debate, you may come find me in my study. For now, rest, and let the infirmary staff help you. Good afternoon."

Irving walks away and doesn't look back.

Anders is released three days later on the condition that he has a templar escort to make sure he doesn't heal himself. Anders hardly cares, too busy debating with himself about whether to go see Irving or not. In the end, he doesn't. They haven't listened to him before, so why would they start now? No one ever listens to mages.

The pain fades, but Anders can still feel the raised scar tissue that will forever mar his back and shoulders. The other apprentices see the marks – they have to, considering the lack of privacy and communal bathing. He hears the whispers and the gossip. He knows that if he plays it right he can use this as an angle for a pity shag, at least, but he doesn't. The scars are too important to trivialize, especially when his nightly visits to the Fade are still peppered with the sound of whip cracks and lurking rage and hunger demons promising revenge for the discount rate of one soul, slightly used.

(He refuses let a demon in. Bad enough that Irving wants him to trade one prison for a gilded cage serving as a Chantry healer – he's not about to lose everything that makes him _him_ to the hollow promises of a demon.)

He walks quickly and efficiently and loses his swagger, actually goes to his classes and plays the good little mage. He even stops goading templars into hitting him – he's felt _real_ pain and has no intention of making more. Greagoir actually believes he's cowed, and their watch relaxes.

Four months after they whip him, Anders smuggles himself out again.

He celebrates his seventeenth birthday with grass between his toes and fresh air in his lungs and pretends, for a moment, that these moments on the run are enough.

He never was a very good liar.


End file.
